Processing into Dominance: Nero, the Crowning of Tiridates I, and a New Narrative of Rome’s Supremacy in the East

In 66 CE, the emperor Nero crowned the Parthian prince Tiridates I king of Armenia before the Roman people in the Forum Romanum. Much scholarship on Roman interactions with Parthia or Armenia focuses on histories of military conflict or diplomatic negotiation. Ritual and ceremonial evidence, however, is often taken for granted. This article uses the coronation to highlight a different way in which Rome articulated its relations with Parthia and Armenia to domestic and foreign audiences. It will show how Nero and his regime used the art of public spectacle to project an image of Roman superiority over Parthia and Armenia in spite of Roman military losses in the recent Armenian war. Tiridates, a Parthian prince and a brother of the Parthian king of kings, traveled to Rome to be crowned the first king of Armenia from the Parthian royal family. To receive this title, Tiridates passed by several monuments to Augustan triumphs over Parthia and Armenia in the Forum. He was also surrounded by a group of Roman citizens, who watched him as they would have watched a defeated foreign leader in a triumph. At the culmination of the ceremony, Tiridates performed proskynesis before Nero at the rostra Augusti and was granted his crown. Through Augustus’ monuments, the collective viewing of Tiridates, and his acts of public submission and deference to Nero, the crowning intimated a new narrative about the state of Roman-Parthian/Armenian relations. While Augustus had represented Parthian and Armenian defeat in art, Nero had compelled a representative of both Parthia and Armenia to come to Rome and kneel before the emperor. Both states were now subservient to Rome, which remained the dominant power in the East.

Reassessing the Role of Parthia and Rome in the Origins of the First Romano-Parthian War (56/5–50 BCE)

This article reevaluates the origins of the First Romano-Parthian War (56/5–50 BCE) to better understand the different perspectives, policies, and objectives of the various Parthian and Roman leaders in the early and middle 50 s that helped forge the great rivalry that emerged between Parthia and Rome. This article breaks from the dominate Rome-centric, anti-Crassus traditions concerning the investigation of the origins of this conflict. Centuries of anti-Crassus propaganda have led most scholars to discount or overlook the critical agency of the Parthians in the conflict and the serious implications of Gabinius’ actions in 56–55, while blaming Crassus for indefensible Roman aggression and greed. The propensity of modern scholarship to villainize and criticize Crassus follows ancient propaganda and stems in part from a lack of understanding of the geopolitical realities that Parthia and Rome faced in the middle 50 s. Further, this article challenges the misguided traditions that, first, describe the Parthians as feeble, passive, and duplicitous in their interactions with foreign powers and, second, that blame the incompetence or weakness of the Parthians’ enemies to explain their actions and successes. Indeed, the Parthians were important, active, and powerful agents in these events, something often obscured or overlooked because of the inherent Roman focus and bias of the Graeco-Roman literary tradition and modern scholarship.

Emasculating healers. Medical castration practices in Greco-Roman antiquity*

In the course of the human past the elimination of the testicles of boys and men – what we call castration – has taken place for a variety of reasons. Many times it was meant to deliberately hurt people. It is and was also performed, though, as a therapeutic measure by well-meaning physicians. Studying the motivations of medical practitioners involved in castration practices provides insight into the deontology and cultural context of these healers. This article explores the healing activities of the physicians of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds in this special field of surgery. In the extant literary sources we find medical indications for castration which are quite obvious to a modern eye, but also more mysterious and unexpected occasions which need to be explained from the historical context.

Potent kings and antisocial heroes: lion symbolism and elite masculinity in ancient Mesopotamia and Greece

In the great kingdoms of ancient Mesopotamia, the king’s power was often evoked by means of lion symbolism. This has led scholars to conclude that lion motifs, and especially that of the lion-slaying hero, in early Greek art and literature were cultural borrowings from the more populous and urbanised civilisations to the east. Yet it is also notable that the Greek tradition, at least from the time of the Homeric poems, tended to problematise the ethics of the leonine man. This article explores the function of lion imagery in narratives of elite masculinity in western Asia and early Greece respectively. It will argue that Greek myth and epic reflect on and problematise any potential equation between lions and kingly prestige, power and masculinity, instead drawing attention to the savagery and social isolation of the lion-like man-of-power, and his difficulty in conforming to the expectations of civilised society.

Time Is Running. Ancient Greek Chronography and the Ancient Near East

The article explores the question whether there was a possible dialogue between ancient Greek and Mesopotamian chronography. This is an interesting albeit challenging subject due to the fragmentary preservation of the Greek texts. The idea that cuneiform tablets might have influenced the development of the genre in Greece lingers in the background without having been the subject of detailed discussion. Notably the Neo-Assyrian limmu list has been suggested as a possible blueprint for the Athenian archon list. In order to examine this topic further, a thorough analysis of ancient Greek chronography starting in the second half of the fifth century BC, when eponymous dates in various literary compositions begin to appear, is required. A close examination of the fragmentary evidence shows how difficult it is to trace the supposed annalistic style in the local histories of Athens (Atthides). In the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the eponymous limmu officials served as the chronological backbone, but there remains a huge time gap between the seventh century cuneiform manuscripts and the Athenian archon list from the fifth century. A comparison of the Neo-Assyrian Eponymous Chronicles with the preserved Greek chronographic traditions in Eusebius’ chronicle (fourth century AD) shows that the similarity is mainly confined to an abbreviated style, as the entries clearly point to the different cultural and political settings. Apart from the Neo-Assyrian sources, the Neo- and Late-Babylonian chronicles deserve further attention in the present inquiry. Looking for a connection with ancient Greek chronography in the fifth century, the lack of wholly preserved texts on both sides in the corresponding time constitutes an unsurmountable obstacle. Presenting and scrutinising the textual evidence both for ancient Greek and for Mesopotamian chronography enables an improved understanding of similarities and differences alike. To exemplify this point, Greek and Akkadian temple histories serve as test cases.

Was There a Military Revolution at the End of Antiquity?

In a book on Justinian’s wars of conquest, Peter Heather has argued that Rome’s ability to wage war in the sixth century CE was helped, to a large degree, by the military revolution that took place in Late Antiquity, which consisted of two principal parts: an increased deployment of Roman soldiers to the eastern frontier, and a shift towards Hunnic tactics. In this essay, however, I argue that these claims are misguided, and using five criteria set out by Lee Brice in an article on military revolution during the reigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great of Macedon, I show that the changes which Heather argues in favour of had begun long before Late Antiquity. Instead, what we see is the continued gradual evolution of Rome’s military, with the Roman state shifting troops to the east from the beginning of the imperial era, and the first documented implementation of steppe-inspired changes dating to the second century.

Ancient Roman Naval Rams as Objects of Phallic Power

Polyvalent meanings behind naval ram displays were prevalent and ingrained in the Roman world, especially at Octavian’s Campsite Memorial for the Actian War. Naval rams and their display alluded to gender and power discourses within Roman society. These discourses included Roman notions of sex, penetration, domination, phallus size, and ideas of achieved hierarchies of masculinity. Analyzing ram displays through Roman perceptions of gender and sexuality, specifically concerning ancient masculinity, reveals that rams functioned not only as weapons of war but also as metaphorical phalloi that embodied and projected immense power. Octavian’s ram display at Actium was used to effeminize Marc Antony through the successful defeat and figurative castration of his fleet, which was done by cutting off the rams from the bows of the warships. By exhibiting the rams as such, Octavian asserted his own impenetrability and masculine virtue, which simultaneously promoted Antony’s penetrability and lack of masculinity. In choosing the largest rams, Octavian implied that his masculine prowess was invincible. The ram display unveiled Octavian’s phallic dominion over all other Greeks and Romans. As Octavian’s naval ram display was the largest and most impressive of the ancient world, he effectively rendered all previous ram dedications subordinate to his own.

“Bad News” in Herodotos and Thoukydides: misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda

Herodotos and Thoukydides report on many occasions that kings, polis leaders, and other politicians speak and behave in ways that unintentionally announce or analyze situations incorrectly (misinformation). Elsewhere, they represent as facts knowingly false constructs or “fake news” (disinformation), or they slant data in ways that advance a cause personal or public (propaganda, true or false). Historians attempt to or claim to acquaint audiences with a truer fact situation and to identify subjects’ motives for distortion such as immediate personal advantage, community advantage, or to encourage posterity’s better (if mistaken) opinion. Such historiographical bifocalism enhances the historian’s authority with readers (as he sees through intentional or unintentional misrepresentations) as well as sets straight distorted historical records. This paper surveys two paradigmatic Hellenic historians’ texts, how they build their investigative and analytic authority, and how they encourage confidence in their truth-determining skills. The material collected confirms and assesses the frequency of persons and governments misleading their own citizens and subjects as well as rival persons and powers. Finally, it demonstrates that these two historians were aware of information loss, information control (dissemination and suppression), and information chaos.